118 posts categorized "Chabad History"

January 15, 2016

"A…point of contention is the gross underrepresentation of Orthodox survivors among the videotaped testimonies that appear throughout the museum. There are approximately 50-60 video monitors of varying sizes in the Holocaust History Museum, which continually play prerecorded personal testimonies of survivors. When the Holocaust History Museum first opened in 2005, only one of the dozens of men, and none of the dozens of women, speaking on these videos were identifiably religious. Chassidic and Chareidi survivors were not represented at all. This denied visitors the opportunity to hear from survivors who view the Holocaust from a Torah perspective. After all, the purpose of a museum is to present an honest and complete picture of its subject. If any museum omits a significant segment of its theme, it is simply not doing its job."

January 14, 2016

A death certificate for the Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson is being auctioned by Virtual Judaica. Schneerson died in 1994 at age 92 after suffering a series of strokes. The current high bid is $1,200.

October 03, 2015

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” – Carl Sagan.

October 02, 2015

Chabad's paradigm for moshiach never asked the US Government to save Jews from the Holocaust. He used money he raised to rescue Jews and instead used it to start his Brooklyn yeshiva while thousands of Jews were being incinerated in Hitler's ovens every day. But there was something special the Lubavitcher Rebbe wanted the US to do for him just before Sukkot 1944.

December 22, 2014

Suddenly [the rabbi's] tone of voice became suspicious. He was no longer friendly. He began to scowl, and began asking me questions like a prosecuting attorney hot on the trail of a confession. "Is the mother Jewish?" My first wife had not been Jewish, I had to admit. (Neither were my next two wives, come to think of it). The rabbi raised his hands in horror and announced that he had no intention of contributing to a book such as mine. "I will not besmirch the name of the Schneersohns, one of the greatest of Jewish intellectual family names, by linking it with that of the Menuhins," he said dramatically. "I will tell you no more."

July 22, 2014

Rabbi Dr. David Berger has written a long review of the three new books marketed as biographies of the late Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson – Rabbi Joseph Telushkin's, Rabbi Chaim Miller's, and Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz's. Each book omits key facts and downplays Chabad messianism, and thanks to Berger, you can see what these three authors intentionally omitted.

May 10, 2014

Rabbi Dr. Alan Brill teaches comparative religion at Seton Hall University. Brill was driven out of Yeshiva University years ago, and his review of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz's new book on the life of the late Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson gives the world a good look into the academic dishonesty inherent to Brill's work that was in part behind that move.

May 10, 2013

Rabbi Yosef Rozin, commonly known as the Rogatchover Gaon, was the hasidic rabbi of Dvinsk connected to the Chabad hasidic dynasty. He also supposedly gave smicha (ordination) to the late Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Scheneerson, although some contend this is not actually true. Rozin's son-in-law passed away, and that created a unique dilemma for him that migh shock you.

January 18, 2013

On Wednesday, US District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered Russia
to pay fines of $50,000 per day until it returns the Schneersohn
Collection of books and manuscripts to Chabad in Brooklyn. In response, Russia threatened to "retaliate" against the US if it tries to enforce that ruling.

February 17, 2012

A rare 1936 ESTP school registration picture of the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, was published yesterday. But did Chabad alter the picture? Was the yarmulke added in by Chabad? As you can see in the full size image posted below, it was.

December 19, 2011

When the late rebbe of Chabad's wife Chaya Moussia Schneerson passed away in 1988, the rebbe asked his followers to name female children after her. Now There are thousands of Chabad girls named Chaya Moussia and its variants and nicknames, and many of them are first cousins, neighbors and classmates, making things a bit more complicated than was perhaps foreseen.

May 01, 2011

The sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe was hiding in war-torn Warsaw during the days after the German invasion in 1939. After locating the rabbi at the order of Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the so-called Abwehr, Maj. Ernst Bloch, whose father was Jewish but who had no particular love for Judaism or those who practiced the religion fervently, enabled him to escape to safety in Latvia.

April 07, 2011

"It is well known that when a dinner of United Lubavitcher Yeshivos concluded with the Hatikvah, the Rebbe removed his auspices from the institution. This harsh action was taken, even though Lubavitchers hadn't sung it, some supporters had. But since the organizers didn't see to it to hush the anthem's singing, the Rebbe removed his name from the school."

January 27, 2011

But will the Rabbinical Center of Europe teach students about Chabad's unique role in opposing rescue attempts during the Holocaust, its claim that Reform and secular Jews caused the Holocaust, and its claim that only the messiah would stop Hitler?

November 05, 2010

Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including extensive interviews, the authors suggest that during the 1930s, not only did Schneerson appear uninterested in becoming a Hasidic rebbe, but he actually engaged in behavior that was guaranteed to raise the eyebrows of other Hasidim, including his own father-in-law.

August 13, 2010

Russia's Foreign Ministry said late Wednesday that the ruling is a rude violation of international law. It said the library was nationalized because its owner, Rabbi Joseph
Isaac Schneersohn, had no heirs. Schneersohn was forced to leave Russia
in 1927.

July 05, 2010

FailedMessiah.com's founder interviewed Saturday night on Zev Brenner's radio show. Topics include the Rubashkin sentence, the new Heilman-Friedman book on the life of the Chabad-Lubavitcher rebbe, pedophilia, and the state of Orthodox Judaism today.

June 14, 2010

What some early readers have found most disturbing is the authors’
description of the rebbe as a not especially pious young Hasid. They
argue that Rabbi Schneerson’s initial dream was to be an engineer and
that he mostly absented himself from Lubavitcher affairs before World
War II, living in Berlin and Paris outside of a religious Hasidic
community.

June 13, 2010

The Rashab, Rabbi Sholom DovBer Schneersohn, and his son the Rayyatz, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, were both sexually molested as children. The Rashab and his older brother engaged in forbidden sexual escapades, as did their wives.

June 03, 2010

Neither in Berlin nor Paris did the Schneersons live in Jewish
neighborhoods. In Paris they resided at the fashionable Hotel
Max, on the Left Bank, whose other tenants were a rich international
assortment of bohemian artists, musicians and writers.

November 02, 2007

I spoke briefly with Mitchell Bard tonight. Bard, author of Will Israel Survive?, was the opening speaker at the local Jewish bookfair. Most of the conversation revolved around an earlier book Bard wrote on Ethiopian Jews and Operation Moses. But the conversation opened this way:

Me:How do you handle corrections on your website?Bard: You mean the Jewish Virtual Library?Me: Yes.Bard: We correct anything that's wrong. Why? Did you see something that needs correcting?Me: Yes. Does that email address work?Bard: On the site? Yes, sure.Me: Who reads it?Bard: I do … I might assign it to someone to research …Me: You see those emails?Bard: Yes. Why? Did you email us?Me: Yes.Bard: What was the correction?Me: The article about the Lubavitcher Rebbe, his academic record, the schools …Bard: I remember that [email]. What was wrong with it again?Me: The academic record, the schools, the …Bard: Where did we get the article from?Me: A Chabad website.Bard: Okay.[Pause.]Me: So why didn't you correct it?Bard: We don't assume people lie about their rabbis, we trust [pause] what they say about their rabbis, what Lubavitch says about their own rebbe.

I had all I could do not to burst out laughing. Instead, I suggested Bard get in touch with Professor Menachem Friedman, the world's leading academic expert (sociology and history) on ultra-Orthodoxy in general and on Chabad specifically.

Bard, who bills himself in part as a historian, replied: "Who's that?"

I should add that Bard seems to be a perfectly nice man. I just hope the standards for his Israel work and his Holocaust work are higher than his standards for the JVL website.

October 09, 2007

JEM, a division of Chabad, so to
speak, today released a video that contains a picture of the Sorbonne
registration document of Menachem Mendel Schneerson. They're dated
November 30, 1937. There are no records of any tests taken and passed
or of degrees granted. It seems the Rebbe registered, perhaps to avoid
deportation to Russia, perhaps to audit classes, perhaps for both
reasons.

In summary, the Rebbe took classes for fewer than 1.5 semesters at the University
of Berlin even though he lived in Berlin for about seven years. He was
not granted any degree.

He studied, and did poorly in both grades and attendance, at a
technical college in Paris. He eventually graduated with a degree in
Electrical Engineering. This college is not part of the Sorbonne.

He then registered as a student at the Sorbonne. There is no record
of any tests taken and passed or of degrees granted. All there is is
the initial registration document.

A friend of Barry Gourary told me
today that Barry told him years ago that his uncle (the Rebbe) was a
perpetual student hanging out at these universities, never in any
degree-granting program. He audited a few classes and hung out the rest
of the time – that would be years of simply hanging out.

Also note what appears to be the birth date given by the Rebbe. I can't make all of it out but the year is definitely 1895. The Rebbe was actually born April 18, 1902. I made highlight of that part of the registration document and posted it to the right here.

Why would the Rebbe make himself seven years older than he actually was? My guess is to avoid a possible draft into the French or, if deported, Russian army. In 1937 the Rebbe was actually 35 years old. By 1940 Britain had extended its conscription age to 40 because of a shortage of soldiers. Making himself seven years older – 42 – made it far less likely that he would be conscripted.

For details on the Rebbe's time in Berlin and Paris, including the discovery of his technical college degree, read this:

UPDATE #1, 10-9-07 5:00 PM CDT – I spoke with a consular official at a French consulate in the US. I asked about the French draft during 1935 to 1940. She spoke with a French military officer who told her that all had to register at 18, most were called up by 19. The maximum age for induction into a combat unit was 40. There was no maximum age for serving in non-frontline units.

I've also been told the Rebbe used 1895 as his birth year in French documents dating to at least as far back as 1935. In other words, he claimed to be 40 years old when he was in fact seven years younger, and did so at a time when a war with Germany was very likely. I firmly believe he did this because it made him too old to serve in a combat unit and, until he graduated as an electrical engineer in 1937, age was his only possible exemption from frontline service. (The French system regularly exempted doctors and other community servants and it used others, like engineers, in non-frontline capacities.)

UPDATE #2, 10-9-07 7:40 PM CDT – In the comments below, Anon and MP note that the Rebbe's passport had a listed birth date of 1895, and that this has been noted in previous Chabad publications. Both are correct, although I believe Shaul Shimon Deutsch may have been the person to most publicize this. The date was probably falsified to help the Rebbe escape the Soviet draft and to allow him to leave the Soviet Union to study abroad.

So the date listed on the Sorbonne documents may not have been used for any other reason except that it matched the Rebbe's passport information.

That the Rebbe avoided the Soviet Draft in the late 1920s is not surprising. Many Jews, especially religious Jews, did this and did so for very good reasons.

There is more to this story than I can print here at this time. The Rebbe had a complicated relationship with France. Look for more information to surface on that complex relationship during 2008.

August 29, 2007

The Jerusalem municipality this week named a street after Rabbi Eliezer Nanas, who endured imprisonment at the hands of Soviet authorities and, later in life, tutored thousands of students in Israel's capital.…

Nanas, who passed away 10 years ago in Jerusalem, was born in 1897 in Kherson, Ukraine. After completing his studies, he became an accountant, a job which allowed him to secretly support the Lubavitch underground yeshiva network in the Soviet Union. He helped provide food to the yeshiva students and also was instrumental in obtaining financial support for the teachers' salaries.

Later, he secured an agreement with a small town mayor in the vicinity of Rostov-on-Don, Russia, whereby students could learn in his jurisdiction even though the town had no Jews of its own. The students learned there for eight years without the Communist authorities discovering the yeshiva.

Nevertheless, Nanas spent a total of 20 years in Soviet prisons for actions deemed counterrevolutionary, an experience he recounted in [the book] Subbota under the pseudonym of Avraham Netzach.…

In prison, Nanas earned the nickname of Subbota, the Russian word for the Sabbath, because of his scrupulous observance of Shabbat under the most brutal of circumstances. While behind bars, he also refused to eat cooked food and adhered strictly to the kosher dietary laws.

In 1955, Nanas was freed from prison and in 1965 was allowed to leave the Soviet Union for, eventually, Israel. Upon his arrival, he immediately began tutoring students; in 1986, at the age of 95, he opened a library in his house that offered Chassidic publications and a quiet place to learn. Today, the library he founded occupies a four-story building in Jerusalem.…

August 05, 2007

avrohom, a Chabad follower and frequent (and rude) commenter on this blog, continues to insist the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe was a blameless tzaddik, a fount of perfection who never erred and who certainly never opposed Holocaust rescue.

…[T]he Rebbe [Joseph Isaac Schneersohn] of course wanted to escape Europe and
had his movement employ every means, even approaching the Secretary of
State, to get him out, but when he was here in the US, he did not
approach those very same people to help rescue those who had to remain
in Europe. However, he did approach those people in the government to
rescue his library, which he did get out in 1941. Are books more
important than people? Some of the books were secular like Dante's
Inferno and books on Communism. This is a sad part of the history of
the Rebbe. Also he started [publicly] condemning people who were organizing
amazing rescue efforts like rabbis Kotler and Kalmanowitz of the
Vad-Haatzala.

He claimed they and Reform and Kofrim Jews were causing the
Holocaust with their non-Kosher ways. Yet, we see that Kotler and
Kalmanowitz helped rescue up to 100,000 people with the War Refugee
Board. The Rebbe felt they were unnecessarily compromising their
religious integrity by meeting with politicians on the Sabbath and
secular and reform leaders. So the Rebbe made mistakes and according to
Chancellor or Yeshiva University, Norman Lamm, he committed blasphemy
by claiming God was punishing the Jews for their sins with the
Holocaust. He claims this is a desecration of God's name (Menachem
Mendel Schneerson also said that saying such a thing is a desecration
of God's name without mentioning his father-in-law). These facts and
many more show how much Chabad does to ignore unpleasant facts about
their history. They just claim that when people write such things, they
are jealous of their movement, do not understand their people or on a
political campaign to smear them. Very weak arguments and signs of
inferiority complexes. So basically this story shows that instead of
pointing fingers, we need to act and make a difference. Small minds
blame others; big ones blame themselves and then seek out action to
make the situation better.

What people wanted was a hero of the Jewish people fighting for their
rights. Instead, the Rebbe just thought of himself and his movement and
condemned others. He was not helping the problem, but creating more. He
should have worked with Kotler and Kalmanowitz, or at least have tried
to, instead of [publicly] condemning them and a host of others.

…Now to Kotler and Kalmanowitz--They took help from everywhere they
could. Kotler was appalled by the Rebbe's focus on the Messiah and his
spiritual campaign, especially throughout 1942-1943 when all energy
should have been focused on rescuing lives. So, Kotler and Kalmanowitz
would have gladly received help from the Rebbe, but such help never
came from the Rebbe. He only condemned them for their un-kosher ways.
For the record, I wanted to find the Rebbe acting like Kotler and
Kalmanowitz. That would have been a beautiful conclusion to the story.
Rabbi Weisfogel, who was Kalmanowitz's assistant, said of the Rebbe "He
was a moral failure at this time to condemn us and the Jewish people as
a whole for the Holocaust when he in turn did hardly anything except
rescue his books and few [close] students' lives."

For the record, if I was a business man, as many Lubavitchers
encouraged me to be, I would not have mentioned his dealings in the US
after his rescue. As one Lubavitcher at 770 told me "If you do this,
you will get thousands of dollars and go all over the Chabad world and
give talks." Yes, I said, but that is not the truth. To this, he was
silent.

And we also have one entire chapter of his book, Rescued From The Reich, that deals with the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe's behavior once he reached America. (This is the part of the book Rigg meant when he wrote, "if I was a business man, as many Lubavitchers
encouraged me to be, I would not have mentioned his dealings in the US
after his rescue.") That behavior included telling people, both through his 'newspaper,' HaKriah v'HaKedushah, and through other writings that those people collecting money on Shabbos to save lives were wrong, were delaying the "redemption," were causing more Jews to die, etc. Those "people" doing that on Shabbos were the rabbis and laypeople of the Va'ad Hatzalah, and they rescued thousands of Jews.

The 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe started his own "Pidyon Shvuyim Fund" to compete with the Va'ad Hatzalah. What did Joseph Isaac Schneerson do with the money he raised? A large chunk of it went to open his Brooklyn yeshiva. Yes, that is correct – the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe took money meant for rescue, meant to save Jews from the Holocaust, and instead opened a Brooklyn yeshiva with it.

And, if that is not enough, the 'Grand Rabbi' of Lubavitch started a 'moshiach campaign.' Why? Because he believed only the coming of the messiah would end the Holocaust and all efforts on the ground – like those of the Va'ad Hatzalah – would be futile.

The Va'ad Hatzalah's efforts led to the creation of the War Refugee Board. So, along with the thousands saved directly by the Va'ad Hatzalah, another 100,000 to 200,000 Jews were saved indirectly through the War Refugee Board. And, yes, the great 'tzaddik' of Lubavitch thought the War Refugee Board was a futile endeavor, as well.

And let us not forget that the great 'tzaddik' of Lubavitch was also an ardent anti-Zionist who urged Jews to stay in Europe. Here is a copy of the 5th Lubavitcher Rebbe's anti-Zionist letter circulated throughout Europe. His son, the future 6th rebbe, was head of the Lubavitch Yeshiva at that time. He fully endorsed his father's anti-Zionism and issued anti-Zionist tracts of his own. More on those sometime in the not too distant future.

When I spoke with Barry Gourary [the only grandchild of the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe; the teenage Barry was rescued together with his grandfather, grandmother and his parents in the rescue described in Rigg's book] three months ago, I asked him about the
Holocaust and his grandfather and father's reaction to it. Barry
thought both did eveything possible to rescue Jews, although he had no
proof or information to back up that belief. He told me his father
backed Rebbe Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn's moshiach campaign – done in instead of rescue – because "my father was a chassid of my grandfather."

Barry was very precise in his answers: "I do not know." "I do
not remember." "I do not think so." Or specific answers with specific details. His answers
seemed completely credible and were given freely.

Sadly, the fact that his belief that
the RAYATZ, etc. did everything they could to rescue Jews was nothing
more than a belief – he had no facts, no documents, not even any stories to
support it – says volumes about the failings of Lubavitch leadership
during WW2.

One can also see that Chabad had no significant presence at the now-famous "Rabbis' March" on Washington. No senior Lubavitch rabbi attended. The march – created by Hillel Kook [a.k.a. Peter Bergson] and promoted by the Va'ad Hatzalah and Agudas HaRabbonim – brought the formation of the War Refugee Board which saved 200,000 Jews during the last years of the Holocaust.

June 14, 2007

A recent op-ed piece in The Jewish Press caught my eye. Called “Time to Give Chabad Its Due,” written by Rabbi Sholom Kalmanson of Cincinnati, it is, in part, a response to a recent Jewish Press article by Rabbi Meir Goldberg which stated that “Kiruv in its early stages was performed mostly by the Torah Umesorah day school movement and NCSY, with their emphasis on reaching children and teens. Eventually, they were joined by Chabad…” Rabbi Kalmanson sincerely believes that Chabad has been slighted, going on to complain that “I can’t even count the number of times I’ve seen an article in which this or that organization claims to be the “first and oldest outreach organization,” and in which Chabad’s pioneering activity is slighted, if it’s mentioned at all.” …

In his op-ed in Haaretz on June 1 ("God as surgeon"), Prof. Yehuda Bauer refers to the opinion of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe regarding the Holocaust.

Without responding to his unwarranted, unacademic, personal attacks against the Rebbe, I think that Bauer gravely misunderstood the nuances and delicate concepts that the Rebbe was conveying in his 1980 letter to Knesset member Chaika Grossman.

The letter to the late MK Grossman was written to an individual whom the Rebbe surely understood to be in a position to correctly understand its contents without more explanation. I am sure that Prof. Bauer, too, writes in one language when corresponding with colleagues and in another when writing for the general public. Nothing in the letter to Grossman contradicts anything the Rebbe said before or after; anything said before or after simply expounds upon and clarifies the concepts written in that letter in a relatively condensed manner. The quoted letter is published in "Likutei Sichot" (Vol. 21, page 397). I would suggest that any serious student of this issue study that letter in its entirety and original before forming any opinion.

Following, however, are some of my personal insights into the matter:

In the letter, the Rebbe was responding to MK Grossman's published questions regarding the Rebbe's published views.

The Rebbe first expresses his astonishment at the fact that she based her criticism on an unedited version of the Rebbe's talks, which was subject to slight misquotes or lacking adequate context, and admonished her for publishing criticism without first checking with him what he meant to say.

The Rebbe then establishes in no uncertain terms who the "good guys" and who the "bad guys" are. When referring to those who perished in the Holocaust, we say "Hashem yikom damam" - meaning "may God avenge their blood." We refer to them as kedoshim, holy individuals. When referring to Hitler and his like, we always add the epithet "yemach shmo," that is, "may his name be obliterated." The Rebbe then goes into a lengthy, detailed explanation of his view, addressing the issues at hand point by point in a detailed albeit condensed way.

Prof. Bauer quotes the Rebbe as saying that "Hitler was a messenger of God in the same sense that Nebuchadnezzar is called 'God's servant' in the Book of Jeremiah (Chapter 25)." How do you, Prof. Bauer, explain Jeremiah's reference to Nebuchadnezzar?

The Rebbe, with this quote, simply draws attention to the biblical precedent seeing in each and every event the hand of God, however inexplicable to the human mind or painful to the human heart. Bear in mind that Nebuchadnezzar was not rewarded, but punished, for what he did.

In his letter, the Rebbe points out both a similarity as well as a distinction between Nebuchadnezzar and Hitler. Whereas the massacres in Jeremiah's times are understood to be a punishment, the Rebbe insists that the Holocaust cannot be understood in this way. The comparison with Nebuchadnezzar was merely intended to make the point out everything that happens in this world is part of God's design, however incomprehensible it might be to the mortal mind.

Here we find yet another example of the inaccuracies appearing in Prof. Bauer's article. He writes: "The Rebbe's stance, therefore, is clear: The Holocaust was a good thing because it lopped off a disease-ravaged limb of the Jewish people - in other words, the millions who perished in the Holocaust - in order to cleanse the Jewish people of its sins. The 'surgery' he spoke of was such a massive corrective procedure that the suffering (i.e., the murder of the Jews) was minor compared to its curative effect."

This is a gross misinterpretation. Prof. Bauer misunderstood the comparison to surgery. Careful reading of the letter will show that the example of surgery is brought only in order to illustrate how something as horrible as an amputation, although beneficial, can seem criminal to the uninitiated. It is by no means brought in order to imply that those that perished were "amputated" for the benefit of the survivors.

The Rebbe clearly writes that although we have no understanding as to why the Holocaust had to happen, we do believe that it is for the benefit primarily of those that perished (not merely for the benefit of the survivors). The Rebbe does not attempt to explain what the benefit is; he simply asserts that it must be for the (eventual?) benefit of those who perished (especially taking into account our belief in resurrection and the world-to-come).

The Rebbe points out that even when the one going through the surgery knows that it is for his benefit, he still cries out in pain, as do those nearest and dearest to him. It is perfectly normal and theologically acceptable for a believing Jew to cry out in pain and clamor to God for mercy, when suffering or when witnessing the suffering of others.

These are just a few examples of how slight inaccuracies in quotes and context can generate conclusions totally contrary to those intended. One must be more careful when quoting our sages and their words and make sure that it is done accurately before taking issue with them.

There are several schools of thought in classical Judaism about why bad things â mega bad things â happen to the Jewish people. Most are predicated on God's involvement in the bad, and explain that by saying we do not truly understand the 'evil.' If we could view it from God's perspective, the reasoning goes, we would only see good.

A favorite example given is the operating theater. Imagine waling into a gallery overlooking an operating room. There behind the glass is are people dressed in white cutting off a man's leg. You have never seen surgery. You do not even realize there is a medical treatment called surgery. What do you think when you see the 'horror' below you? You scream, you try to get the 'butchers' to stop mutilating the man. But, in truth, what these men are doing is saving the life of that patient.

The problem here is not with the Rebbe's analogy or Professor Bauer's understanding (or lack there of) of it. The problem is the Rebbe made statement's without carefully thinking about how they would be viewed by people who are not steeped in the particular theology espoused by him. A more current example of this lack of forethought comes from Rabbi Ovadia Yosef who, not so long ago used the explanation of the Ari for the Destruction of the Second Temple and the deaths that surrounded it to explain the Holocaust. Rabbi Yosef's remarks were met with a similar firestorm of disapproval.

I wrote a piece for the American Jewish World explaining â but not necessarily endorsing â Rabbi Yosef's position. That piece was in response to a piece similar to Professor Bauer's, this one written by an old friend, Holocaust scholar Stephen Feinstein. I recall Rabbi Moshe Feller, the head Chabad rabbi in the upper Midwest, being very pleased with that piece and hoping the JTA would pick it up. (The JTA did not.)

My piece didn't change Stephen Feinstein's mind, largely because the fine distinctions needed to make these types of analogies work â in this case, the amputated limb is not itself bad, per se â are difficult to accept for those who do not buy into this line of reasoning to begin with.

Going back to the example of the Ari, he was explaining the Destruction of the Second Temple 1500 years after it happened. But what he was really doing without expressly saying so was explaining the Expulsion from Spain less than 100 years after that tragic event, roughly the same distance between it and the Ari's generation as the Holocaust and ours.

The Rebbe would say after this experience that it is wrong to explain or justify the Holocaust. It is simply too close, to raw, and no explanation will be accepted.

I would say that a God who needs to treat an illness by roasting alive hundreds of thousands of Jewish babies is not much of a God. The Rebbe, I think, would reply that an illness that requires the roasting of those babies as treatment must be a horrible, horrible illness.

In essence, this is exactly what is happening today between Professor Bauer and Rabbi Shemtov.

The Rebbe's explanation requires belief in a perfect, kind and just God who does no evil. To accept that requires accepting unspeakable horrors as good, divinely mandated and endorsed. For most people, even believing people, this is very difficult to do.

The Rebbe's words cut like jagged-edged swords. They were widely publicized and hurt many, many people, especially survivors.

The Rebbe meant no harm, but harm was done, nonetheless.

Professor Bauer's words are not "unwarranted, unacademic, personal attacks against the Rebbe." They are words of a survivor, a man who saw unspeakable horrors and spent his life documenting them so the world would not be able to forget, not be able to sweep a few million butchered Jews under the rug.

What Chabad should do is admit the Rebbe's error, his lapse of judgment, and then move on. But Chabad will not do this because it will never admit that its rebbes were anything less than perfect.

The panel discussion on "Haredim and the Holocaust" recently aired on Channel 1 should have included the views of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Chabad's so-called "King Messiah"), Rabbi Menachem Schneerson.

On the subject of the Holocaust, the Rebbe wrote as follows: "It is clear that 'no evil descends from Above,' and buried within torment and suffering is a core of exalted spiritual good. Not all human beings are able to perceive it, but it is very much there. So it is not impossible for the physical destruction of the Holocaust to be spiritually beneficial. On the contrary, it is quite possible that physical affliction is good for the spirit" ("Mada Ve'emuna," Machon Lubavitch, 1980, Kfar Chabad).

Schneerson goes on to compare God to a surgeon who amputates a patient's limb in order to save his life. The limb "is incurably diseased ... The Holy One Blessed Be He, like the professor-surgeon...seeks the good of Israel, and indeed, all He does is done for the good.... In the spiritual sense, no harm was done, because the everlasting spirit of the Jewish people was not destroyed."

The Rebbe's stance, therefore, is clear: The Holocaust was a good thing because it lopped off a disease-ravaged limb of the Jewish people - in other words, the millions who perished in the Holocaust - in order to cleanse the Jewish people of its sins.

There is logic in this theology: If God is indeed omnipotent, knows everything and controls the world ("God presides over the trials of 4 billion people all day long, every day without a moment's rest"), which implies divine supervision on an individual and collective basis, then the Holocaust took place not only with his knowledge, but also with his approval.

Schneerson does not accept the idea of "hester panim," or God's face being turned away, to explain why He was not present when 1.5 million Jewish children were murdered. According to some religious Jews, this hester panim was a consequence of man's sins, and, above all, the sins of the Jewish people. Schneerson says that God was there, and that he wanted to Holocaust to happen. But because it is inconceivable, in his view, for God to commit evil, he portrays the Holocaust as a positive event, all the more so for the Jews.

After this text was published in the summer of 1980, kicking up a storm, Chabad claimed it was based on an inaccurate Hebrew translation of talks that the Rebbe delivered in Yiddish. The Rebbe, they said, had no idea his remarks were being published. It seems hard to believe Schneerson would not go over every word published in his name, let alone a text put out in Hebrew by Machon Lubavitch in Kfar Chabad.

In fact, there is a document written by the Rebbe himself, in Hebrew, which bears his statements about the Holocaust. The late Chaika Grossman, a leader of the underground in the Bialystok ghetto, who survived the war and served as a Knesset member for several terms, published an article in Hamishmar newspaper on August 22, 1980, quoting Schneerson and expressing her profound shock at his words. On August 28, 1980, the Rebbe sent her a reply on his personal stationary. The letter, apparently typewritten, contains a number of corrections in his own handwriting, and is signed by him. In it, the Rebbe confirms everything in the published text.

His remarks, Schneerson explained, were based on the Torah. Hitler was a messenger of God in the same sense that Nebuchadnezzar is called "God's servant" in the Book of Jeremiah (chapter 25). The "surgery" he spoke of was such a massive corrective procedure that the suffering (i.e., the murder of the Jews) was minor compared to its curative effect.

I was invited to take part in this television debate, but my appearance was canceled at the last moment, perhaps because of my opinions on the subject. The truth is, there are no "Haredim." There are Haredi groups and Haredi individuals, and their conduct during and after the Holocaust took different forms. Since the Holocaust, Jews have wrestled with this issue and continue to do so. Rabbi Schneerson's views are one of many.

But Chabad is a large and influential Hasidic dynasty. It has a messiah who lived and died, and many look forward to his resurrection. In this respect, Chabad is a kind of semi-Christian movement. Therefore it is important to know what its leader said. The "King Messiah" did not deny the Holocaust. He justified it.

The author is a Holocaust scholar.

[Note: This article was published in Ha'aretz. Ha'aretz often changes the url of its articles or pulls them from its website. This appears to have something to do with the architecture of the website. This article is too important to be lost that way.]

May 30, 2007

Apparently timed around his 70th birthday, Ha'aretz has feature about Professor Menachem Friedman, the noted scholar and expert on Israeli ultra-Orthodoxy, haredim. The piece contains some new revelations about Chabad, and some old truths not often publicized, including [and I quote here, with minor editing for clarity]:

In order to preserve the family's distinguished lineage, there were many marriages within the family; these often led to the birth of mentally and physically handicapped children.

The Rebbe himself had a mentally ill brother, Dov Ber, who was murdered by the Nazis in the Ukrainian hospital where he was hospitalized, and his memory has been obliterated from the history of Chabad Hassidism. [This is the "young boy" the Rebbe saved from drowning. He was walking with DB on the edge of a river or lake (I don't recall which). The Rebbe became distracted and DB jumped in. DB could not swim. The Rebbe heard screams from others who saw DB sinking. The Rebbe realized his brother had jumped in, and went in after him and saved him.]

Another brother of the Rebbe's, Aryeh Leib, turned secular, but Chabad followers tend to portray him as a very pious and righteous man.

Chabad Hassidim claim that Rabbi Menachem Mendel studied at the University of Berlin. After lengthy research by Friedman and others, the Rebbe's name was found in a list of people auditing classes at the university. It turns out that during his six years in Berlin (1926-1932), the Rebbe studied philosophy and mathematics for a semester and a half.

A similar search in Paris revealed the legend that the Rebbe had studied medicine and engineering at the Sorbonne was also far from the truth. In fact, he studied electrical engineering at Ecole Speciale des Travaux Publics, du Batiment et de l'Industrie (ESTP).

Why no book from Friedman on Chabad? Because the hasidim blocked access to two archives: Despite the considerable effort invested, Friedman has yet to publish the book. "There were all kinds of excuses I told myself," he says, "such as, I have more pressing and important studies to work on, but the truth is that I didn't feel sure enough to publish the book. The Hassidim blocked access to several of their important archives, and I felt that without those archives, the work wouldn't be accurate. I had excellent material and I felt that I had indeed found the story of this life, and still I was concerned." [Those archives would include the main Chabad library and archive in Brooklyn, the one that the Rebbe claimed in a court deposition belonged to "all hasidim." He also claimed the library needed to be kept intact to allow scholars access, rather than have it broken up and sold. He made these claims to keep Barry Gourarie, the only grandson of the 6th rebbe, from inheriting the books and the archive materials. Chabad regularly denies access to the materials or allows selective access under tight supervision.]

Friedman heard the Rebbe [who died childless] was afraid to bring children into this world because of the "precedent" of his mentally ill brother.

According to a rumor among Chabad Hassidim, the Rebbe had a child who died young.

There was a power struggle after the 6th rebbe's death between the older son-in-law, Shmaryahu Gourarie, and the younger son-in-law, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. MMS was named Rebbe, but not before there was a sharp clash between the two camps in the year following the 6th rebbe's death.

Even after his selection, the widow of the previous rabbi did not accept the choice and "did not allow the Rebbe to set foot in her house and also did not agree to give him the Riyatz's shtreimel [fur hat]. That is how the custom began of the Rebbe wearing a fedora instead of a shtreimel."

Realize this: The Rebbe lived in Berlin on community money sent by his father-in-law. He was there for almost six years, supposedly in university. His total attendance? A semester and a half, about six months total. He was in Paris for almost nine years, according to the Ha'aretz calculation. He also supported there by community funds sent by the 6th rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson's father in-law. He got what amounts to a two year junior college degree in Electrical Engineering. He did not work in either Berlin or Paris.

People who knew the Rebbe and his wife in those days have claimed that neither behaved like hasidim. Some have said they did not behave like observant Jews. The material Chabad makes public about those days is based on testimony from people who saw the Rebbe a handful (or fewer) times in all those years, often at a public event or place where the Rebbe knew he would be seen by Orthodox people. But the Rebbe did not live in a Jewish neighborhood in Paris, and café owners and others there and in Berlin who saw the daily life of the Rebbe and his wife have a different, more interesting story to tell.

May 21, 2007

The Elder just sent me an extraordinary email with a link to M. Avrum Ehrlich's website, where he has a complete pdf copy of his book, Leadership In The Habad Movement available for freedownload. I think this is Ehrlich's best book to date on Chabad, and it's well worth reading.

He seems to have new book on Chabad in the works, as well.

Update 12-31-2014 – Ehrlich's website is no longer functioning. So here's the book as a PDF file:

Failed messiah was established and run in 2004 by Mr. Shmarya (Scott)Rosenberg. The site was acquired by Diversified Holdings, Feb 2016. .We thank Mr. Rosenberg for his efforts on behalf of the Jewish Community.

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